Get to know Judy

Professional Qualification: A lifetime of knowledge-seeking and experience

Energy work: Reconnective Healing

Judy Hamilton is a pioneer in the alternative and natural health industry in Grande Prairie, Alberta. She learned from her father, who’s successful Alternative Health and Country Store in Dawson Creek, British Columbia led to the opening of a health food store here. Although the industry was still very new at the time, Judy operated Health Food Supplies on Main Street for fifteen years. After she sold her business to pursue other avenues, this great industry drew her back in, and she began working at Health Hut. Over time, Judy has come to play many roles within the Health Hut team, from a consultant, manager and advisor to the casual in-house expert she is today. Judy is a knowledgeable lady, a passionate advocate for green living, a fundamental part of Health Hut’s history, and a leader in Grande Prairie’s natural health industry.

What’s one item on your bucket list?

I’d like to see parts of Canada I haven’t seen before.

It is Friday at 6 pm, and you are enjoying a lovely dinner. Where are you, what are you eating and who is with you?

I like Earls. I would go for their Santa Fe Chicken Salad. I’d be with Cindy, a fun friend that I’ve known for a long time.

Who is a valued teacher in your life?

My father. He was a great teacher, very intelligent. He was one of those self-taught people, a very solution-oriented person. He would say, “Whatever you do, look for the truth in it. With that, you can’t go wrong.”

What area of holistic health do you find the most interesting? Why?

For me, it would be the spiritual part. Unless we have peace of mind, the other stuff doesn’t fit too well anyway. I was talking with someone recently about belief, that belief is overrated if they are set beliefs. I think we should be able to change our beliefs.

Teach us something new that you are learning about right now.

How to rely on myself instead of relying on others for answers. We always think someone else is smarter than we are. We look for answers that somebody else has, but their answers are for them, not for us. Our answers are within ourselves. If we listen to our body, we know what it needs. But we don’t, we listen to what so-and-so says or Dr. So-and-so in his book. If we really think about it, we bring a health problem on ourselves, so it’s us who has to fix it. If we have a liver problem, what are we doing that caused the liver problem? Someone might suggest taking Milk Thistle, and we can do that, but if we’re not stopping the problem, then Milk Thistle is a bandage, it’s not going to solve the problem. The answers are inside us.

What do you find most enjoyable about working at Health Hut?

I enjoy the customers and the staff. Some I have known for many years. They’ve taught me as much as I’ve taught them.

As a Supplement Advisor, what area of natural health do you enjoy discussing with customers?

Getting back to basics. If I want to have healthy food, the soil it grows in has to be healthy, and the water has to be healthy. And then it should be eaten the way it was meant to be, the way that nature made it. Once we started taking this-out-of-that and this-out-of-that, then well, if we eat fragmented food, we’ll be fragmented people. I think we ought to eat food the way nature made it as much as we can.

And also, I am a believer in eating the foods that grow in our area. One of the things I used to tell my customers is, “you don’t see polar bears eating bananas and you don’t see monkeys eating fish.” They eat what grows in their area because that supports life in that area. I tell my customers too that when it comes to fruit, eat fruit, but think about the size. In southern climates, the fruit is big because it’s hot and the fruit has a lot of water in it, but as we go further north, the fruit gets smaller and smaller. So we should be eating the berries, like Saskatoons, blueberries, cranberries, strawberries, which grow here because they’re more nutrition packed for this area.

Another thing I tell my customers is that cow’s milk is for cows, mother’s milk is for people, and milk in any species is given until the baby has teeth, then we should go off milk and start eating. We don’t drink milk the rest of our lives. The animals know that, but we don’t. We want to think that we know better than Mother Nature.

How has your understanding of health or dis-ease changed throughout your career?

A lot of people get sicker as they get older. I think it’s because a lot of health problems are based in emotion and if we’ve never dealt with them emotionally, they just keep coming up physically until we do. It’s not old age; it’s until we start dealing with stuff. So I just wonder, how many of our physical problems could be solved if we dealt with the underlying emotional problems?

What’s a self-care practice you are doing or would like to start doing?

Nature is very healing and to come in contact with nature more is my next goal.

What is your current favourite quote, mantra or affirmation? Why?

“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” -Mark Twain It resonates with me because it seems to take a whole lifetime to figure out that most of what we’ve been taught and believed to be the truth (about religion, politics, history, etc.), and even when we’ve tried to tell other people about what we knew to be true, it turns out to be false or just someone else’s opinion. Much of history as we’ve been taught is open to debate: the history of any war is always written by the winner, and we never get the loser’s perspective. So, we accept so much teaching as truth, but it “just ain’t so.”